McDevitt is hands down the greatest econ professor at UCLA. He is very insightful and goes above and beyond to help students. For example, before the midterm and the final, McD will host several extra office hours for students to attend and happily goes over any concept, even if its doing the same one over and over.
The midterm and final are straightforward especially if you have had him for any other class. The exams have a multiple choice portion, true or false, and free response. He will tell you all of the topics you need to know for each exam. For the free response, he will likely say, "there is a 99% chance it will be on ____" which means thats what you will be doing for the free response. He grades on a curve; however, because the material isn't too difficult, do not rely on the curve to boost your grade. While no homework is assigned, definitely work on practice problems and the study questions he provides to you. They are the most helpful and beneficial way to study and pass the exams.
If you have had bad experiences with other econ professors like me, then take McDevitt. He will give you hope that good econ professors exist at UCLA.

I took three classes from McDevitt: 170, 122, 11

I have a mixed review on prof. mcdevitt

11: For an econ newby who just started taking econ classes, McDevitt is gonna be a tough choice. His materials could be hectic at times, his notes are long and sometimes incorrigible. Best of luck if you ever take econ 11 w/ McDevitt.

170: Materials are very well organized compared to 11 and 122, where the course materials jump between one subject and another. Highly recommended. You just need to focus on graphs and formulas

122: Materials are poorly organized. You will get in a lot of trouble keeping in track with how the materials should be ordered and digested. Compared to 11 and 170, this class had the most amount of information that required to be remembered. Furthermore, you will need to remember things like how change in one of factors in the exchange market will cause 3-5 different changes in other factors. I'd like to say that you should avoid this class, but if you are a huge fan of McDevitt giving it a try might not be a bad idea.

Overall, McDevitt is not that terrible of a professor. His pace in lecture is a bit fast, but that won't be much of a problem if you review your notes to actually digest the information.

7/10

I decided to take McDevitt for an Econ upper-div as part of the BizEcon major requirements. I'm writing this review as someone whose main focus of study is accounting.

This was the first class I've had with McDevitt and as far as the organization of the class is concerned, I thought he did a good job. There are two midterms and a final, and he posts study questions and sample midterm/final questions that mimic the actual exam. Having had Sproul for 11/101 and Keskinel for 102, the math I had formerly encountered in economics was simple because both of them focused more on graphs. McDevitt, on the other hand, focuses on both graphical and mathematical interpretations. If you're not as good at math, you might find this more challenging than your typical sproul class.

The average scores on the exam were pretty high and the curve was slightly more generous than 101, but not by much. I'd say you can expect at least a B if you're pretty good at both mathematical and graphical interpretations, and you put in a lot of time to understand the concepts inside and out. If you're looking for an econ upperdiv with a more generous/forgiving curve, I'd recommend Econ 122 with Burstein.

McDevitt is by far the BEST Econ professor one can ever have. He explains the material thoroughly and walks you through the intuition behind concepts. If people dislike this man, it's because they're sour over their grade.

It's true that his classes won't be the easiest ones at UCLA. Then again, are you here to learn or to sit and look pretty? Put in the time and I'm sure you will get a lot out of it. Heck, he even hosts additional office hours on weekends before exams to answer students' questions. If you get a bad grade, the unfortunate truth is you didn't invest in the course enough. I have had him for Econ 11 and 170. I got A+'s in both; the trick is to learn the topics inside out. As to the post below saying he got a B even though he has a 3.8 GPA, it only makes me wonder what kind of filler classes he has been taking for that 3.8. McDevitt posts all study questions at the beginning of the course and they word for word echo in difficulty with the exams.

Take him. You won't regret it.

An awful professor!! If you don't like math-econ, stay away from him. His lectures are awful-he basically has them memorized. There honestly is no need to show us through math every single theory-I didn't even know what I learned because I was just busy memorizing the math. Avoid at all costs!!!!

Mcdevitt is great ! he keeps things simple...all the material covered on his midterms and final come straight from his lectures and study questions. The book is useless. There are no tricks on his exams, just study well, study hard and you should be able to pull off a nice grade....This is getting a little too cliche now, but seriously, McDevitt IS the best econ professor this econ department has to offer.

He is the best prof I have ever had in econ, and I'm a 4th year.

1) Don't even bother to buy the book. I got an A in the class, and I didn't even have the book.

2) Always go to class and pay attention. Take good notes and U'll be fine in the class. Everything is in his lectures.He tells U everything in class. It might be hard sometimes because he is kinda fast.

3) Make sure U do and redo the problem sets at least twice until U become really fast at doing typical problems.

He has plenty of office hours around midterms, he sets up time for students to come and look at their midterms and the answer key. Everything is very straightforward with him.
The midterms were very very long and U had to go really fast and budget your time wisely. The final was shorter.